Whitstable Tollgate Cottage - Joy Lane/Canterbury Road, Whitstable, Kent, UK
Posted by: 
Dragontree
N 51° 21.034 E 001° 01.306
31U E 362243 N 5690668
This old toll house with its distinctive design lies in the centre of the road junctions of Joy Lane, Canterbury Road and Borstal Hill. It is part of a historic toll road.
Waymark Code: WME5V9
Location: South East England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 04/07/2012
Views: 4
There is a snippet of history on Wikipedia:
visit link
'Around the mid-18th century, goods and passengers began to be transported by ship between London and Whitstable, and a toll road was built to the cathedral city of Canterbury. These improvements in transport led to the town's development as a seaside resort; the first advertisements for bathing machines at Whitstable appeared in 1768.'
The Turnpike Road here is the B2205 but turns into the A290 which runs straight into the city of Canterbury. Brian Smith describes where the original tollgate stood on this excellent website, an extract of which is quoted below: visit link
'The Whitstable Tollgate was built well over 120 years before the bridge for the North Kent railway was erected across Oxford Street/Canterbury Road. The Tollgate was built on the Canterbury side of the then Mill Road now Belmont Road intersection. That intersection was then quite different to that known in living memory.
The Tollgate was relocated to the site we are familiar with today, the triangular island at the junction of Borstal Hill, Joy Lane and Gordon Road.
A hundred yards or so further south we come to the area discussed earlier once known as Borgsteall thence Bostall Green. Here we find the junction of Main Road mentioned earlier and in 1860 in the middle of the junction, the newly built Tollgate displaced from the earlier Mill Road junction site.
The line of the road down from the Hill actually passed behind the eventual Tollgate in the form of a narrow lane into Main Road/Joy Lane. On the left in 1830 the 'line' entered the lane past 'Waypost House' one of the earliest 'postal depots' established around 1830 in the early days of the present National postal system.
In 1871, tolls were abolished, the former Turnpike Road was now Whitstable's sole 'Highway to Canterbury'. No longer a Turnpike Road after 125 years it had seen the local population grow from less than 1000 to 6000. By this time a daily coach service to and from Canterbury had become well established.
The tollgates, the symbol of a Turnpike Road would be removed although the Whitstable Tollgate Cottage would remain at the bottom of Borstal Hill as the last remnant, the last symbol, the sole 'Memorial Headstone' of the Turnpike's existence but without a single inscribed word to mark that fact.'